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OK, class, get out your copies of _Dracula_ and open them to Chapter Seven. Now, skim past the newspaper clipping from the _Dailygraph_ that Mina Murray has pasted into her journal, the one

about the storm off the coast of Whitby, and go directly to the part listed as “Log of the ‘Demeter.” You’ll see that Bram Stoker has replicated what appears to be a captain’s diary,

detailing the curious goings-on of a voyage from the Bulgarian town of Varna to London; it’s one of the more clever epistolary tricks the author trots out in his 1897 novel. A Russian

seafaring vessel, the Demeter shipped out of port on what promised to be a routine trip across the Mediterranean Sea. The crew, however, is spooked. They think they’ve seen a strange man

wandering the deck in the wee small hours. It will not end well. It’s a minor detour in _Dracula,_ just a transitory bit of business designed to get the bloodsucker from Eastern Europe to

England so he can get his teeth into Mina’s neck. In the book, it’s less than a third of a chapter. In most movies based on Stoker’s novel, official and unofficial, the sequence runs shorter

than your average trailer. In _The Last Voyage of the Demeter,_ it’s the whole bloodsucking enchilada. The idea of taking a segment from the grandfather of all vampire tales, that falls

somewhere between a tangent and a trivia-question answer, then turning it into a two-hour movie is one of the more curious bits of intellectual-property raiding in recent memory. No one was

exactly clamoring for a full-blown deep dive into Dracula’s snack-and-nap sea cruise, or even “_Master and Commander,_ but make it gothic and terrifying.” Yet here we are. If those

descriptions above just got your jugular vein all aflutter, however, this elaborate mix of old-school schooner drama and strictly-for-the-hardcore-Drac-heads fan service is most certainly

for you. To its credit, _The Last Voyage of the Demeter_ turns its assignment into an opportunity to create the sort of nautical period piece that rarely gets the chance to set sail these

days. You can practically smell the scallywags and salty dogs who make up the crew, from the gruff captain (_Game of Thrones_‘ Liam Cunningham) who’s set to retire once he gets to Londontown

to the first mate (David Dastmalchian) with the get-moose-and-squirrel accent to the Bible-quoting cook (Jon Jon Briones). There’s a creak to the ship’s wood and a _fwap_ to the masts

during a gale wind that will cause those who’ve devoured Sunday afternoon screenings of vintage seafaring epics to reflexively drool. EDITOR’S PICKS Besides the well-tested sailors, there

are a few extra guests onboard this ill-fated trip. Like Dr. Clemens (Corey Hawkins), the Cambridge-educated physician who wants to return to England and filled a last-minute vacancy. And

Clare (_The Nightingale_‘s Aisling Franciosi), a stowaway from a small Bulgarian village who appears to have some sort of blood infection; Clemens goes to great pains to give her

transfusions and save her life. And that shadowy figure, which those on the night watch catch glimpses of. Whether this person is connected to the sudden slaughter of all the livestock

onboard, or the mysterious disappearances of several able-bodied seamen, is anyone’s guess. All the Demeter’s crew know is that some person of aristocratic bearing — perhaps a count — paid

for a lot of cargo to be shipped to Britain; that the dragon insignia slapped on those boxes tended to freak out the locals; and something very shady is happening once the sun goes down. The

Dracula (Javier Botet) that eventually makes his presence known is not of the suave, Euro-sophisticated Lugosi type but the bald, clawed, fang-forward creature of the night you associate

with _Salem’s Lot_ and _Nosferatu_. In fact, _Demeter_ owes its biggest debt to F.W. Murnau’s perpetually eerie 1922 silent movie, in both its channeling of that classic’s indelible sequence

aboard a ship and its determination to make Max Schreck’s bug-eyed bloodsucker look like a matinee idol by comparison. You wonder if director André Øvredal, his below-the-line

collaborators, and the cast started each day on set by staring intently at this image for 30 minutes and then going, “Right, so like, let’s just aim for _that._” The Norwegian filmmaker

behind _Trollhunter_ and _The Autopsy of Jane Doe_ clearly has reverence for the source material, scant as it is, and knows his way around what’s essentially a floating haunted house. He

also isn’t afraid to get cruel when he needs to, which lends an edge to scenes like the ship’s resident kid (Woody Norman) being hunted by both a “turned” sailor and a bat-winged

monstrosity. No one’s safe. TRENDING STORIES RELATED CONTENT If_ The Last Voyage of the Demeter_ feels like you’re watching some sort of dare — “I dare you to take these three pages and make

a movie out of them!” — or a footnote etched with stretch marks from being pulled as far as it can go into action-horror territory, that’s because it’s 2023 and even the dust in the I.P.

corners are fair game. Will those who find the mustiest pieces of horror-lit lore dig this more than those just pining for a halfway decent jump scare? Probably. Will others mining for

something deeper find that references to racial prejudice circa the late 19th century feel a little too tossed away, or the “well, it _could_ be a franchise” ending too ambitious? Maybe.

Will moviegoers from all walks of life have to endure lines like, “A boat without rats… such a thing is against nature!”, delivered in the campiest way imaginable? One hundred percent most

definitely yes. But this is also the type of project that manages to lift itself up above the fray by sheer will and chops, not to mention its determination to scratch a throwback-genre

itch. _The Last Voyage of the Demeter_ is a threadbare high-concept story given the high-thread-count treatment — a lovely piece of luxury pulp. It’s also the creepiest and classiest bit of

late-summer counterprogramming you’re likely to find, which may say more about our current landscape of cinematic pleasures than the movie itself.